


What Remains

by leusignac (Golbez)



Series: every knight a brother [2]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Dialogue Light, Female Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Gen, POV Third Person Limited, The vault, Wordcount: 100-1.000, the Heavens Ward, the Heavens' Ward were all tempered you fools
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-05
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-02-26 14:17:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18718759
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golbez/pseuds/leusignac
Summary: The Soleil had swooped on ahead, carrying the Archbishop and one set of their brothers to safety, leaving their second airship to quietly follow amidst the ensuing chaos.Ser Haumeric, on that second airship, and the aftermath of the Warrior of Light's adventure through the Vault.





	What Remains

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompt "To Entrust Unto Tomorrow."

The Soleil had swooped on ahead, carrying the Archbishop and one set of their brothers to safety, leaving their second airship to quietly follow amidst the ensuing chaos. Ser Haumeric had, per Ser Vellguine's orders, hung back from the thick of battle, keeping to the inner halls of the chapel to heal the knights they had dispatched to deal with the intruders.

But none had returned. The seconds had stretched into minutes, the silence pounding into his ears for too long before he realized the noise of combat had long since died out. When he'd ventured out into the chapel, hands shaking as he held his staff close, he'd quickly understood why not a single knight had returned to him. All of them were dead, their corpses painting the floor of the sacred chamber a red that had blossomed across the marble floor from the pools around them.

He had caught a glimpse of the Warrior of Light as she rushed up the steps to the Quire, her tail catching his eye through the ornate rail. His grip had tightened around his staff, and he'd stood there and wondered, as it became more difficult to breathe or see past the growing blur in his eyes, how one person, tiny as she was, could have done this.

Then Ser Vellguine's voice had come over his linkpearl, and he'd barely had time to murmur a prayer for the dead before he'd been called to the airship hangar where they were all gathering, and now he stood on the deck of their second airship, clinging to one of the ropes while Ser Paulecrain steered the airship out of the hangar. His brothers were all silent, the weight of their duty hanging thick over all of them. The Archbishop was safe and their plans would proceed apace, but to lose their holy grounds so soon and be forced to flee Ishgard—a price Haumeric had not expected they would pay, and he was certain his brothers felt the same.

Their airship, in an effort to be discreet, sped around the spires and past the Chancel. Haumeric caught sight of the carnage that marked the Warrior of Light's route. On the Chancel floor itself, the blackened marble from Ser Charibert's flames, on the platform and stairs across it, more bodies and blood running in streams down the steps, and inside the unusually empty rotunda at the top of the stairs, a lone corpse garbed in priest's wear—

He hurled over the side of the airship, earning an annoyed yell from Paulecrain, but when he was done and wiping his mouth and gazing over the side of the ship, the body was still there.

Even from so high up, he could recognize the priest that had mentored him through his early days in the Vault when he'd been a fresh graduate of the Scholasticate. Priesthood suited him only as far as duties and anything scripture related went. The politics and machinations within the Vault had always been beyond him, and his calls for reform had made him particularly unpopular anyway, but Father Jilletont had been different. He'd been kind and hadn't expected Haumeric to give up his fight. They'd walked the gardens of the Vault together between sermons and other duties, discussing scripture and whatever struck their fancy.

Haumeric steadied himself and trained his eyes on the rotunda's doorway for as long as the airship's course allowed. Jilletont in a heap, at the very center of the room, and from what he could see, none of the statues remained in their corners. How often he'd told Jilletont to rest, to stop practicing the summoning he had grown famous for within the Vault's elite. One gargoyle had been enough to sap his strength and leave him ill, two had left him bedridden for a short time. For him to have summoned all four...

He couldn't even imagine it. The desperation when faced with the Warrior of the Light, the fear, the desire above all else to ensure His Eminence's safety. This was not the rest he had wanted for his friend. It was becoming difficult to breathe.

An arm wrapped around his shoulders, and he looked up to Ser Hermenost's concerned gaze.

"Come away from the side of the airship," he ordered, not unkindly. Haumeric nodded and let him steer him to where Ser Guerrique stood and blocked the view out of the airship with his bulky frame. Hermenost kept his arm around him, holding him steady. "Breathe, easy now. Think little more of it."

Following instructions was easy. Casting the sight of his friend's corpse and the sight of all the dead in what had been a sanctum from his mind was not.

But Haumeric nodded anyway, letting Hermenost hold him for as long as he cared to.

The fighting would end soon, he reminded himself quietly. When the Archbishop's plans came to full fruition, when the world bowed to them and Halone's power and all was at peace and order. This was what the Archbishop had promised them. He had always despised violence more than anything in the world, that foul worm that ate through Ishgard and the rest of Eorzea without end. The Warrior of Light was nothing but violence given form, and Haumeric knew now that there would be no peace if they did not remove her from their world first.

**Author's Note:**

> It's my headcanon that the Heavens' Ward's tempering built on their loyalty, since we know from interviews that they were each meant to have a scene that showed us why each one followed Thordan VII. Ser Haumeric always seemed like he stood out as someone who would object to Thordan's plans, having a lore entry that emphasized his pacifistic nature, but there must have been a reason he didn't get out of there before any kind of tempering happened, so...Thordan must have told him something that appealed to him.


End file.
